the Geogging Collectivehttps://geoggingclub.wordpress.com
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 04:07:03 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngthe Geogging Collectivehttps://geoggingclub.wordpress.com
Demonstration and March: Against colonialism and racismhttps://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/demonstration-and-march-against-colonialism-and-racism/
https://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/demonstration-and-march-against-colonialism-and-racism/#respondThu, 13 Mar 2014 14:38:48 +0000http://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/demonstration-and-march-against-colonialism-and-racism/Education Graduate Students' Society at McGill University: Demonstration and March: Against colonialism and racism FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 2014 Gathering at 6pm at Mt-Royal métro (Mt-Royal Avenue, between Berri and Rivard) Part of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on the anniversary of the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa.…]]>

Although the blockade is often dismissed as the “native unrest” of peoples who cannot let go of history, it is quite the opposite. This talk will argue that the blockade is one of the clearest articulations of the contemporary problem of settler colonialism.

HONOUR YOUR WORD (2013) is a portrait of life behind the barricades for the Algonquins of Barriere Lake, a First Nation whose dignity and courage contrast sharply with the political injustice they face. After the film there will be a discussion facilitated by Dr. Shiri Pasternak who has worked in solidarity with the people of Barriere Lake since 2008. The event will provide an opportunity to reflect on the colonial present in Canada as well as present day anti-colonial struggle.

]]>https://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/dr-shiri-pasternak-honour-your-word-film-on-barriere-lake-resistance/feed/0kileygBlockade: Insurgency as Legal-Spatial Encounter Lecture by Dr. Shiri Pasternak, Columbia University & "Honour Your Word" (2013) Film and DiscussionArticle from Slate concerning personalization of Google Maps: “My Map or Yours?”https://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/article-from-slate-concerning-personalization-of-google-maps-my-map-or-yours/
https://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/article-from-slate-concerning-personalization-of-google-maps-my-map-or-yours/#respondTue, 28 May 2013 20:55:09 +0000http://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/?p=462“Google’s plan to personalize maps could end public space as we know it.”

Interesting article on Slate offers a critique of the personalization of Google Maps, arguing that public space will suffer when Google rolls out its next update where “the maps we see will be dynamically generated and highly personalized, giving preferential treatment to the places frequented by our social networking friends, the places we mention in our emails, the sites we look up on the search engine”. I’ve pulled some excerpts out, but find the whole article here, on Slate.

“…Back in 1970, cultural critic Richard Sennett wrote a wonderful little book—The Users of Disorder—that all Google engineers should read. In it, Sennett made a strong case for “dense, disorderly, overwhelming cities,” where strangers from very different socio-economic backgrounds still rub shoulders. Sennett’s ideal city is not just an agglomeration of ghettos and gated communities whose residents never talk to one another; rather, it’s the mutual entanglement between the two—and the occasionally mess that such entanglements introduce into our daily life—that makes it an interesting place to live in and allows its inhabitants to turn into mature and complex human beings.

Google’s urbanism, on the other hand, is that of someone who is trying to get to a shopping mall in their self-driving car. It’s profoundly utilitarian, even selfish in character, with little to no concern for how public space is experienced. In Google’s world, public space is just something that stands between your house and the well-reviewed restaurant that you are dying to get to. Since no one formally reviews public space or mentions it in their emails, it might as well disappear from Google’s highly personalized maps. And if the promotional videos for Google Glass are anything to judge by, we might not even notice it’s gone: For all we know, we might be walking through an urban desert, but Google Glass will still make it look exciting, masking the blighted reality.

The main reason to celebrate maps that aren’t personalized has nothing to do with technophobia or nostalgia about the pre-Google days. It’s quite simple, really: When you and I look at the same map, there’s a good chance that we might strike a conversation about how to enrich the space that the map represents—perhaps plant more trees or build a sidewalk or install some benches. That our experience of what used to be public space is getting increasingly privatized—first with smartphones, then with Google Glass and self-driving cars. True, cars are already something of a private space, but if the driver essentially becomes a passenger, she will pay even less attention to the outside environment. You can’t watch. That all of this is done in the name of “organizing the world’s information” should worry anyone concerned with the future of urbanism.”

]]>https://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/article-from-slate-concerning-personalization-of-google-maps-my-map-or-yours/feed/0geoggingPostcolonial Geographies (GEOG 498G) to be hosted by the geogging collectivehttps://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/postcolonial-geographies-geog-498g-to-be-hosted-by-the-geogging-collective/
https://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/postcolonial-geographies-geog-498g-to-be-hosted-by-the-geogging-collective/#respondSun, 07 Apr 2013 20:52:54 +0000http://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/?p=450The students of GEOG498G are looking to continue their exploration of Postcolonial Geographies after the semester ends this week. The geogging collective has offered to host this conversation with a new section called Postcolonial Geographies.

I will be posting instructions on the course page. If you are hoping to contribute, feel free to comment here and I will send you an invitation. (this might require some trial and error)

If you are looking for a 300 level human geography course (such as that line on your flow chart that includes GEOG 330 and 318), the department is offering. Though there is no course description available, it is based loosely on the Critical Geography course from last year (GEOG 398G). Geographic thought can be defined as the study of the approaches within the discipline of geography over time (so positivism, the cultural turn, feminism, etc).

It will be taught by the new hire for the Environmental Justice tenure track position. Hopefully more details will follow.

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]]>https://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/fall-2013-course-geog-398t-geographic-thought/feed/0kileygNew World Karya Katirin, 2010Julie Podmore – Lesbians as Village ‘Queers’: The Transformation of Montréal’s Lesbian Nightlife in the 1990shttps://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/julie-podmore-lesbians-as-village-queers-the-transformation-of-montreals-lesbian-nightlife-in-the-1990s/
https://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/julie-podmore-lesbians-as-village-queers-the-transformation-of-montreals-lesbian-nightlife-in-the-1990s/#respondMon, 01 Apr 2013 19:14:12 +0000http://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/?p=430Geography, Planning & Environment Department lecture series invites us the next talk this Friday:

Lesbians as Village ‘Queers’: The Transformation of Montréal’s Lesbian Nightlife in the 1990s

April 5, 2013
12:30 – 1:30 PM Room H–1269
Light lunch is provided

This presentation examines the relationship between lesbian identities and the production of commodified ‘queer space’ in Montréal’s gay village in the 1990s. In contrast with the literature that stresses their exclusions in gay commercial space, this paper argues that Montréal’s gay village was an important site for the reworking lesbian identities in the ‘queer’ 1990s. The paper examines this reworking through three primary forms of analysis. The mapping of lesbian commercial spaces is used to demonstrate the abrupt integration of lesbians as consumers of village spaces in the early 1990s. Lesbian bar advertisements are used to read the shifts in the commodification and representation of lesbian nightlife that accompanied this spatial shift. Finally, in-depth interviews conducted in the late-1990s are used to examine the ambivalent response of queer-identified lesbians to the rise of village nightlife in this period.

“The Nomad and the Whale”
Max Ritts, PhD Candidate
Department of Geography
University of British Columbia

Abstract:
Working to listen and listening to work — such is the daily routine of the Cetacea Lab intern. Cetacea Lab is an experimental whale research station on the North Coast of BC. Since 2004, when Enbridge first proposed sending oil tankers past its waters and out to Asian markets, the Lab has found itself at the centre of a growing environmental controversy. Whale scientists listen to generate abundance studies and spatialize cetacean behavior patterns, but increasingly, to generate knowledge-claims that can free the North Coast from the grip of industrial capital too. How did this happen? And what makes the intern so special? My talk will sound out concretions in a fascinating interspecies history, one shaped by naval bioacoustics, environmentalism and the casualization of labor.

Dr. PASCALE BIRON obtained her M.Sc. from the Université de Montréal in 1991, followed by her PhD in 1995 for her doctoral research in fluvial geomorphology. In 1998, she began her work at Concordia. Her research interests are stream restoration for fish habitat, river management and the sustainable management of agricultural streams, the impact of climate change on rivers, GIS and three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics. She has publications in peer-reviewed journals in the fields of geomorphology, engineering and ecology and she frequently collaborates with engineers, biologists as well as hydrogeologists to improve our understanding of river dynamics and to develop more sustainable approaches in river management. She is currently working on research projects related to fish habitat in perturbed environments (funded by NSERC), freedom space for rivers (funded by Ouranos, a climate change research centre) as well as impacts of bank stabilization on fish habitat, funded by the Ministry of Transportation of Quebec.

Dr MONICA MULRENNAN was born and raised in Ireland. She completed her PhD in 1990 at University College Dublin in coastal geomorphology. She then moved to Australia where she spent three years as a post-doctoral student working on the evolution of tropical estuarine environments near Darwin. During this period she was introduced to indigenous peoples’ interests in coastal environments through her collaboration with indigenous Torres Strait Islanders with whom she developed the marine conservation strategy for Torres Strait (MaSTS). She moved to Canada in 1993 where she held a postdoctoral position at McGill University before joining Concordia a year later. Her research interests are indigenous knowledge, customary marine tenure and management, and indigenous peoples’ adaptations to environmental change. She has sustained her collaboration with Torres Strait Islanders over the past two decades while also working closely with the James Bay Crees of northern Quebec since the mid 1990s. She has published in peer-reviewed journals in human geography, anthropology, human-environment relations, and environmental policy and management. Her current research is focused on the contribution of protected areas to the protection of indigenous environments and cultural heritage.

CATHERINE MOORE blends the scientific and spiritual, whether through her initial research interests in environmental biogeography, her current exploration of the interface of worldview and sustainability, or her lifelong love for our planet. She has been an advisor to Sustainable Concordia, environmental consultant for government and non-governmental organizations, and facilitator of workshops on sustainability within the university and beyond. With many years at Concordia, her primary professional focus and passion remains teaching

Join us for light lunch with Nasrin Himada (Concordia Geography, Planning & Environment: “Militarism and the City”) presenting & Alessandra Renzi (School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee) as we discuss the criminalization of protest, with a focus on strategies used in the Toronto G8/G20 Summit.

NASRIN HIMADA is a writer, independent film curator and teacher residing in Montreal. Her writing appears in Montreal Serai, West Coast Line, Inflexions: A Journal for Research-Creation, and FUSE Magazine. Her curatorial work has been programmed in such festivals as Image+Nation: Montreal’s International LGBTQ Film Festival, and in collaboration with 16 Beaver in New York City. She teaches part-time in Geography, Urban Planning and Environment, and is currently completing a PhD in the Interdisciplinary Program in Society and Culture at Concordia University. Nasrin’s research focuses on the militarization of urban space through prison infrastructure and police surveillance. Nasrin is the co-editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy.

ALESSANDRA RENZI is Social Studies of Information Post-doctoral Fellow at the School of Information Studies of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she examines how participatory social media platforms affect activist practices of collaboration. Her research on media activism and the criminalization of dissent has recently appeared in the book Infrastructure Critical: Sacrifice at Toronto’s G8/G20 Summit (Arbiter Ring).

This presentation draws on Alessandra’s talk entitled: “Infrastructure Must Be Defended: Multi-Issue Extremism and the Criminalization of Dissent after the Financial Crisis”

The Toronto G8/G20 summit of 2010 indicates more than a scalar shift in security; in fact, this case signals significant changes to surveillance practices, control techniques, and funding arrangements within the post-911 security apparatus. To reconsider these changes, the talk offers a detailed analysis of the categories of the protester as “multi-issue extremist” and of “endangered critical infrastructure,” as nomenclatures used by the government and the media to characterize extreme public threats at a time of austerity measures.

]]>https://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/lunch-the-criminalization-of-dissent-after-the-financial-crisis-w-nasrin-himada-alessandra-renzi/feed/0kileygAlessandra RenziLUNCH& the criminalization of dissent after the financial crisisFirst organizational meeting for the Winter semesterhttps://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/first-organizational-meeting-for-the-winter-semester/
https://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/first-organizational-meeting-for-the-winter-semester/#respondTue, 01 Jan 2013 20:26:05 +0000http://geoggingclub.wordpress.com/?p=385If you are interested in getting involved in organizing the LUNCH& series, please fill in this Doodle by January 4th so we can schedule the first meeting at a time that works best for everyone (the doodle is confidential). Also email geoggingcollective@gmail.com if you want to be added to the organizers mailing list.

We are interested in feedback on what you would like to see happen this semester. Feel free to comment or contact us if you have ideas / reflections. We are especially interested in hearing from first year students!